1994
Eileen Gray was born in Enniscorthy, Ireland in 1878. Her childhood was spent moving back and forth between London and Ireland. She first went to Paris with her mother in 1900 to see the Exposition Universelle. She was very impressed by the drawings of Rennie Mackintosh she saw there. She loved the Capital and wanted to come back. In 1901 she moved to London to study at the Slade School of Fine Art, where she received an academic training copying Antik sculpture and ancient painting. She also studied anatomy. In 1902 she moved to Paris and studied at the school Colarossi rue de la Grande Chaumière. The following year she changed to the Académie Julian rue du Dragon and studied painting. In her education she was in contact with the work of Toulouse-Lautrec, Cezanne, Van Gogh, Gaughin, Seurat, Bonnard, all being exhibited in Paris at that time.
Private dialogues were initiated between the places and languages that shaped her life. She resided as a foreigner inside her languages and homes. Even the architecture of her childhood carried with it a sense of alienation. In 1976, the year of her death, she wrote "As a child I loved the old Irish house but that was pulled down in 1895 or earlier and a horrible brick structure built in its place so I went to live in France." France continued to be her home throughout her life, although she was never clearly identified by others as either Irish or French. During the war she was forced to leave the coastal houses she had built for herself, interned as a "resident alien" (Peter Adam, Eileen Gray: Architect/Designer. New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1987: 315). JJP Oud sent her a post card after seeing the Wendingen special issue of 1924 with a postscript "do you have any modern 'movement' in your country?"(Adam, 169). It was written in English and addressed to Ireland. The dialogue around her nationality continues in current exhibitions of her work. MOMA in NY identifies her as an Irish designer; the V & A in London as a French modernist. "Take the way Gaelic or Irish English set English in variation" (Deleuze, 147). British curators interpret Gray within the prevailing (major) French modernist trend, perhaps to level the potential threat posed by a minor Irish architectural language.
Her strong Irish accent immediately identified her as a foreigner in both London and France. "Un style, c'est arriver à bégayer dans sa propre langue. C'est difficile, parce qu'il faut qu'il y ait nécessité d'un tel bégaiement. Non pas être bègue dans sa parole, mais être bègue du langage lui-même. Etre comme un étranger dans sa propre langue" (Deleuze, Dialogues, 10). Using a different language to express oneself is a process with which we also are experimenting, particularly within these pages. We recall Beatriz Colomina's words in the preface of Privacy and Publicity: "I have managed to become a foreigner in both languages, moving somewhat nomadically through the discourse on an unofficial itinerary"(Beatriz Colomina, Privacy and Publicity, Cambridge: MIT Press, 1994). Probably Eileen Gray felt the same way. A sense of disbelonging can be felt in her work: the experimental aspect of it; the noncomformity to architectural styles and conventions; the use of different materials for her furniture; the use of different technics; the non-heroic aspect of it; the continuous "devenir" of it(Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, Mille Plateaux: Capitalisme et Schizophrénie, Paris: Editions de Minuit, 1980: 284. note: indeed one of her chairs she named the nonconformist. A nomadic quality about her work is also reflected in her interpretation of the 'formule camping').
